Media captionThe Nobel committee decided Englert and Higgs should jointly take the accolade for the boson, discovered at Cern in 2012

Two scientists have won the Nobel prize in physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson.

Peter Higgs, from the UK, and Francois Englert from Belgium, share the prize.

In the 1960s, they were among several physicists who proposed a mechanism to explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass.

The mechanism predicts a particle - the Higgs boson - which was finally discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, in Switzerland.

"I am overwhelmed to receive this award... I would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particlePeter Higgs, Emeritus professor of theoretical physics, University of Edinburgh

And the renowned physicist Prof Stephen Hawking added his praise: "In the early 60s, theorists were struggling to understand why particles have mass. Peter Higgs and Francois Englert proposed a mechanism called symmetry breaking. This mechanism also predicted a massive particle, the Higgs boson. The discovery last year at Cern of a particle with the correct properties confirms this prediction and is a triumph for theory."

"The discovery of the Higgs boson at Cern... marks the culmination of decades of intellectual effort by many people around the world," he commented.

The Nobel prizes - which also cover chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics - are valued at 8m Swedish krona (£775,000; $1.2m). Laureates also receive a medal and a diploma.

The official citation for Englert and Higgs read: "For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the Atlas and CMS experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider".

David Willetts, UK minister for universities and science, said the award was "an incredible endorsement of the quality of UK science".

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "This brilliant achievement is richly deserved recognition of Peter Higgs' lifetime of dedicated research and his passion for science.

"It is also a credit to the world-leading British universities in which this research was carried out.

"It took nearly 50 years and thousands of great minds to discover the Higgs boson after Prof Higgs proposed it, and he and all those people should be extremely proud."

Best explanation of Higgs boson?

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Scientists' best theory for why different things have mass is the "Higgs field" - where mass can be seen as a measure of the resistance to movement. The "Higgs field" is shown here as a room of physicists chatting among themselves.

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A well-known scientist walks into the room and causes a bit of a stir - attracting admirers with each step and interacting strongly with them - signing autographs and stopping to chat.

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As she becomes surrounded by admiring fans, she finds it harder to move across the room - in this analogy, she acquires mass due to the "field" of fans, with each fan acting like a single Higgs boson.

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If a less popular scientist enters the room, only a small crowd gathers, with no-one clamouring for attention. He finds it easier to move across the room - by analogy, his interaction with the bosons is lower, and so he has a lower mass.